The Adventurers Return

Ten Great Things About Our Vacation
1. Road trips always remind me that I married the right guy. (He's that cute one at the end of the beach there)
2. Whidbey Island really is as beautiful and charming as we hoped it would be.  Deception Pass Park (it's North Beach is the picture above) is especially lovely
3. Surprises.   For example, when our second campground was less than exciting we pulled out our brochures and learned about Double Bluff Beach, which turned out to be amazing and lead to...
4.  The single best haul of sea shells in terms of variety ever,  if you want to collect shells, Double Bluff is the place to go.
5. That I got to spend time with my awesome family at my Grandma's 80th birthday party.
6. That I got to visit my friend Becky K., see her great kids, and visit with her for a nice long chunk of hours.
7. Camp fires.  Really, just staring at the flames and talking is the best part of camping.
8. The trees.  Holy cow does that island have amazing trees.
9.  Langley, WA.  It's like the Gilmore Girl's Stars Hollow only in the Pacific Northwest.  Yeah, I pretty much want to live there someday :-)
10. My mom, who, even when she wasn't home, managed to make me smile after a long road trip by leaving me cookies.

Three Things I Learned on Vacation
1.  I like camping and I like long road trips.  I don't necessarily love them in combination.
2. When a campground map shows that your campsite is close to the beach, that means nothing.  Our South Whidbey State Park site looked about 500 ft from the beach, and it was, if you dropped a rock off the edge and it went straight down.  The actually walking distance, however, was about a half a mile hike down the side of the hill.
3. The type of wood you use really does determine how easy it is to start and maintain a fire.  The stuff we bought from the State Park stores was a bit of a challenge, the stuff from their hardware store worked awesome.

Five Things I Love About Home
1. The floor is not made of dirt.
2. Going to the bathroom does not require planning, nor a hike up the hill.
3. PRIVACY
4. Knowing where things are.
5. Coming home to this (see photo below) in the garden.